Monday's Aren't Always a Bad Thing

Mondays are those kinds of days where most of us reluctantly get out of bed to get back in to the grind of our weeks...school, carpools, offices, yadda, yadda and yadda.

But for me, the past two Monday's have been pretty exciting and have actually given me good reasons to get out of bed, shower with a fast pace and get my morning groove on.

Like last Monday. Let me back up...my children's school has a thing called "Red Ribbon Week". It's a week where the students declare that they will be drug free and they spend the week learning all kinds of interesting things about drug and alcohol abuse - how abuse (and use as a child) affects your brain, and your life. They have great speakers and fun activities all week long.

One of the things that they did this year was host a poster contest. One child from the primary grades (1-3), one from the intermediate (4-6) and one from the middle (7-8) would be awarded the winner and given $50 in cash. Well, Legare wasn't interested but Julia bit - art is her thing. She decided to make a cute poster that said "You and Me (cute paper plate face), Let's Be (cute bumble bee drawing), Drug Free. She also laced the border of the poster with red ribbon
(by the way - those aren't eyebrows - they are pink "barrette ribbon bows" holding the red ribbon hair out of Me's face)

Well, Friday before last I got a call from the parent organizers of Red Ribbon Week that they would like for me to come to Monday's Assembly because Julia would be recognized.

So, last Monday she was awarded Winner of the Intermediate poster contest and got $50. I was so excited! So was she.

Well, by the time the week was winding up, I received an email that let me know that I needed to be at today's assembly because Julia was being awarded September's Citizen of the Month for the Intermediate grades. Oh, stop my heart! I couldn't believe it - well I could believe that she may be the winner of such an honorable award, I just couldn't believe it was happening. And after they introduced her with such flowery phrases as "inspiration to her teachers", "role model for her peers", "always kind", etc, etc, I was producing the expected amount of tears. Julia was truly surprised and was basically speechless afterwards. I couldn't hug her enough. I was duly impressed with the certificate...in a leather bound certificate holder much like those your diploma comes in. Nice - I true keeper.
Also at today's assembly I was witness to my son and 3 other classmates helping the librarian hand out "birthday books" (books purchased for the school library in honor of the month's birthday students). Later I learned that he was tapped to help because of his generous and helpful attitude. Double nice!

Oh, Mondays...of late not the dreary things of weeks past. Actually a pretty incredible kick off for your week when they go like this!